In early April, I had the honour to attend Craig Shallahamer’s Oracle Performance Firefighting and Advanced Performance Analysis courses. It was a great opportunity, since he came to Frankfurt which is just a three hours drive away. It was the second time meeting him – and it was great, again. The last two days have been a bit dry by their theoretical nature, and the last exercises on friday are only of limited use for me. But especially the first three days of firefighting have been really useful and most valuable due to their basic technology insights and the teached strategies “how to be sure”.